Rob
2018-04-23 02:08:59 UTC
The Eastern Roman Empire effectively outlived the Western Roman by about 215 years, until the successful Umayyad siege, infiltration and storming of its capital of Nova Troia in 690 according to the Christian calendar.
However even though Roman imperial history from the third Christian century appeared to be a procession of “one damn thing after the other” in its final centuries the East Roman Empire showed surprising vitality, managing to reconquer much of the Mediterranean west under Justinian in the 560s.
It makes me wonder if the East Romans could have held off the Arab invaders, who fragmented and lost their vitality only about two centuries later.
To the skeptical I would say the East Romans staged big comebacks before, recovering Italy for a generation and Africa for two, and coming back a while later from the Avar ravaging of the Balkans and the Sassanid ravaging of Asia Minor and Levant and siege of Nova Troia.
If the ERE can hold on till the Abbasid decay in Asia Minor and in Greece could they not be “home free” for a few more centuries even into the 2nd Christian millennium?
What could the knock a.on consequences be for Europe in particular?
With an ERE instead of the Abbasid Anatolian province of al-Turayah, and the Umayyad holdover state of Bizantiyah in southern Thrace and Greece, might Christian missionary work prosper more than Muslim?
With the East Romans holding the straits and their trade routes I would think the Bulgarians, Serbs and Magyars would have become Christian instead of Muslim, and the Vlachs would have remained Christian. Perhaps we could have had a Christian “Varangian” princedom based in al-Qiyev instead of the “Caliphate of Rus” we all remember.
A Christian Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals?
A basically Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire lasting up to half a millennium, perhaps being called the “Trojan” Empire even more than the “Roman”?
Your thoughts?
However even though Roman imperial history from the third Christian century appeared to be a procession of “one damn thing after the other” in its final centuries the East Roman Empire showed surprising vitality, managing to reconquer much of the Mediterranean west under Justinian in the 560s.
It makes me wonder if the East Romans could have held off the Arab invaders, who fragmented and lost their vitality only about two centuries later.
To the skeptical I would say the East Romans staged big comebacks before, recovering Italy for a generation and Africa for two, and coming back a while later from the Avar ravaging of the Balkans and the Sassanid ravaging of Asia Minor and Levant and siege of Nova Troia.
If the ERE can hold on till the Abbasid decay in Asia Minor and in Greece could they not be “home free” for a few more centuries even into the 2nd Christian millennium?
What could the knock a.on consequences be for Europe in particular?
With an ERE instead of the Abbasid Anatolian province of al-Turayah, and the Umayyad holdover state of Bizantiyah in southern Thrace and Greece, might Christian missionary work prosper more than Muslim?
With the East Romans holding the straits and their trade routes I would think the Bulgarians, Serbs and Magyars would have become Christian instead of Muslim, and the Vlachs would have remained Christian. Perhaps we could have had a Christian “Varangian” princedom based in al-Qiyev instead of the “Caliphate of Rus” we all remember.
A Christian Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals?
A basically Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire lasting up to half a millennium, perhaps being called the “Trojan” Empire even more than the “Roman”?
Your thoughts?